NEW YORK — Qualcomm announced a custom silicon partnership with a leading hyperscaler during its recent earnings call. Initial shipments from this partnership are expected later this year.

The collaboration involves the development of CPUs, AI accelerators, and custom ASICs. Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon described the company's custom silicon business model as bespoke. Durga Malladi, Qualcomm's Executive Vice President and General Manager for Technology Planning, Edge Solutions and Data Center, said, "We have a long, successful track record of taking a platform and customizing it for the specific performance, power, and connectivity needs of a given market."

"I'm not able to share specific names, but I will say that the demand signal from these companies is clear," Malladi said. Malladi said, "In this Agentic AI era, there's a need for inference-optimized energy-efficient solutions, and that's exactly what we're focused on, as we deliver leading CPU, AI accelerators and custom silicon, building a broad, diverse customer base in this space." Malladi said, "Agentic AI requires heterogeneous compute across CPU and AI accelerators, with intelligence flowing seamlessly from device to edge and data centers."

Malladi said, "AI is no longer a feature; rather, it is the foundation of every digital experience moving forwards." Corporate spending on AI globally reached $1.5 trillion in 2025 and is projected to exceed $2 trillion in 2026. AI agents consume between 5 and 30 times more tokens than standard chat interactions. Amon said, "2026 is the year of agents."